


They Shine for You

by Lola1b



Series: In Your Arms [2]
Category: Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Comfort, M/M, One-Shot, Pre-Relationship, Stucky - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-17
Updated: 2016-06-17
Packaged: 2018-07-15 15:25:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7227922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lola1b/pseuds/Lola1b
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky thinks he's a monster. Or worse, a victim. Steve sees something else entirely. It's visible in the stroke of his pencil, in the colors he chooses for his palettes. Everything he wants to show Bucky, everything he can't see in the mirror – it's in the drawings.</p><p>Follow up to “Did the Cold Hurt?” In which Steve does draw Bucky.</p><p>Part of a series but also stand-alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	They Shine for You

 

It's at the end of a casual conversation. Bucky says something that reminds Steve of the past. Steve makes a comment. Bucky's face twists.

“I don't remember that,” he says. And just like that, Steve's world comes crashing down again, just a little bit. It's been crashing for years. Little by little.

His smile fades.

“It's okay, Buck.”

“No,” Bucky interrupts. “It's not.” He looks at Steve, his jaw set tight, his eyes round but with dark brows drawn over them. It's like he's trying to be defiant. And Steve shifts in his seat and looks down at his feet because Bucky shouldn't need to be defiant towards him.

“Cause you keep talking,” Bucky continues, “and acting like I'm the same. Like any minute I'll go back to being James Buchanan Barnes.” Steve looks up at the name. Bucky's face cracks a little bit. Just a little bit. “But he's gone, you know.” He's never coming back from the war. That was Steve's biggest fear when Bucky got drafted. And he wanted to go so badly so he could save him. Because he'd do anything to save him. “The guy you rescued – the person you've risked so much for – he's nothing but a monster.”

“That's not true,” Steve says. “You didn't have a choice.”

Bucky lets out a small, irritated breath. “Then worse. I'm a victim. Best assassin in the world, and a damned basket-case.”

Steve doesn't know what to say to that. Bucky is more than darkness and pain. He is more than monster and victim. Steve sees something else entirely.

Bucky gets up. He's out the door before Steve can say another word.

* * *

 

It started during that movie night. After he filled the entire notepad with doodles, his fingers became more and more twitchy. They grabbed any writing instrument and moved on their own accord. Even the cream in his coffee wasn't safe from his restless fingers. He found a thick, large notepad in one of the cupboards that had a nice, textured paper. The graphite smoothed over the surface creamily and filled the pages with soft shapes.

Soft, round shapes. Long strokes like hair. Pupils dilated. Smooth, full lines outlining lips. He filled three pages of these shapes before he realized they held a common theme. For a brief moment he panicked. He didn't want anyone, especially Bucky, seeing this. Not yet. Not ever. But his heart was still in tatters, and this helped hold it together. A little bit. Just a little bit, but it did. So he continued to draw.

He drew Bucky when he was behind the glass window. The man on the other side of the table didn't exist. Natasha by his side, watching intently, didn't exist. The handcuffs for the doctor's safety were the ends of sleeves to a long, clean shirt, and the tired look in Bucky's eyes was due to the long night of dancing. There were pretty women in dresses in the background to prove it, and a long bar at which jealous men sat. Out of the countless looks of despair and anger that flashed across Bucky's face that day, there was one of a pure smile. A memory of something in Brooklyn. Steve wasn't listening. He just drew the smile.

He drew him when they watched their weekly movie. It helped them both catch up. Sam felt horrible about the _Titanic_ incident and made them a 'safe' list of good movies they should watch. Some were boring. Some had Bucky sitting at the edge of his seat. Some even had Steve look up from his notepad. But always, there were a few more sketches. Sketches of gasping lips, of amazed eyes, of a hand gripping the popcorn bowl and loosening with relief when the protagonist survived.

Sometimes, Bucky would fall asleep. It was okay because he was sleeping in the living room. It was okay because he was already drawing him before his breaths became so calm, so even. Now he just had closed eyes, and Steve could get in closer. It barely felt like drawing. It was more like freeing something that had been trapped in the white paper for too long.

Natasha noticed it first. Steve thought he was alone on the balcony. He got so absorbed into it. She peeked over and caught a glimpse of Bucky's slightly parted lips, his closed eyes, his peaceful expression. Steve jerked the pad away from her and hid it under his arm. She didn't say anything. She just smiled her smug little smirk and went on her way.

The next day, a box full of paints and a stack of canvases was sitting on his bed.

He began by transferring the graphite pictures onto the canvas. Paints were too expensive in his time so he always stuck to paper. And so he had no clue how to blend color. Or how much paint to even put on a brush. He put too much yellow in the red, and Bucky's skin-tone was all wrong. Then he put too much red, and he looked like a tomato. He put a few too many drops of black and the color was too dark. He tried to lighten it with white, and it just made the color fade.

Eventually, he stopped using so much black and white. They destroyed the color. They were so much more vibrant when he stuck to the primary ones. YouTube was very useful, too. He watched tutorials. He read up on color theory. He decided he'd never use black and white again.

* * *

 

A knock comes on the door. Steve's so absorbed he barely hums his greeting. There's specks of yellow on his hand and shirt. He can feel paint on his face, too. Probably red, from when he had that piece of hair on his face and smacked himself with a red hand. Bucky looked good in red. Red, and his arm outstretched over cream skin. His closed eyes, bold with the brown-red lashes. His hair, like the lashes, brown and red and a little yellow. A speck of green, where the blue of the sky and the yellow of the sun melted together. It all became green, and then yellow.

And now, it is all yellow. The sun is shining so hard behind his stretching pose that there is no sky. Steve squints at the window.

“So yellow,” Bucky says quietly.

Steve whips around. He forgot someone came in. He tries to stand and move the painting, hide it somehow. But he just manages to knock it over. Both he and Bucky dive for it, but Steve catches it first. He picks it up, his fingers digging into the fresh paint. Now there's yellow streaks, and a few green and blue ones too, running over the edges of the canvas, like a rainbow puked on it. Steve looks down at it again. Forgets for a moment again. Bucky steps forward and Steve quickly sets the painting down against his bed, titled away from Bucky's view. But it's no good. There's more paintings scattered around. Bucky smiles from all directions. Bucky sleeps peaceful like the kid he was in Brooklyn in black and white sketches on the messy bed. Everywhere is Bucky.

Bucky picks up a sketchbook.

Steve tries to say something but nothing comes out.

“See, I told you you were good.”

Steve gives him a strained smile.

“But...” Bucky begins, and a nervous shiver runs up Steve's spine.

“I was going to do everyone. You first,” he says, trying to shrug, trying to play it off casually, “because we spend so much time together. Nat next. Maybe Sam.”

Bucky smiles. He flips through the pages. There's a few sketches of Natasha. One of her looking out the window, her long hair framing her face. A little of colored pencil outlines the red of it. But Steve gave up on pencils a while ago. They weren't vibrant enough.

The paintings were all of Bucky. He looks around to make sure. No Natasha. No Sam. There's one that Bucky stared at for a long moment. Steve watches him, afraid to say a word. Bucky puts the sketchbook back down on the bed and walks over to the canvas. It's his metal arm with the shield – red, white, and blue – drawn in place of the star. Bucky gently touches the top of the drying canvas. They are all still drying.

“If I ever get my arm back, can I show this to Stark?”

Steve's lips part and he smiles. “Yeah.”

Bucky looks back at Steve with a faint, hopeful expression. “Can you draw it, then?”

“Yeah, Buck. I'll draw whatever you want.”

“Will you draw me?”

Steve blinks in surprise. He's been doing just that. He looks around at the paintings in his room. There were at least six. One in the corner that Bucky was touching. The newest one by his bed. The rest were lined up against the window.

“I kind of did,” Steve says, his hands coming up to rest on his hips. He feels the blush creep up his cheeks. “Sorry I didn't ask for permission.”

Bucky smiles. And it's like Brooklyn all over again. Bucky's smiling like the scrappy kid he was. It brings it all back a little bit. Just a little bit, but it does.

“I meant right now. When I'm awake and aware. I could make a silly joke about French girls, but I think that time passed.”

“By about two weeks, yeah,” Steve agrees. “I'll draw you, sure.”

Bucky looks at the painting Steve was trying to hide, and it's as if he suddenly changed his mind. He shuffles and looks toward the door. “Maybe... maybe not.”

“Why not?” Steve's hands fall from his hips and he slowly takes a few steps toward Bucky. Bucky ignores him and walks around him to his bed. He picks up the drying canvas. It looks like some damned modern art piece. There's no more sun and he can barely tell where his own body is supposed to start anymore with all the color. But it's beautiful. More than he will ever be.

“Because I don't look like this,” Bucky finally says as he inspects the painting. There's a knot in his stomach and he watches Bucky gently sets the canvas back down.

“Yes, you do.”

“You're just making me look good. I told you your drawings were grand.”

“No,” Steve says, stepping forward. “They're only this good _because_ they're of you.”

“You want that Bucky back,” he says, looking toward one of the paintings beside the window where his hair is short and he's staring off into the distance, an army hat atop his head. “You draw these happy things. Paint with yellow and green. But that's not me.”

“It's what I see,” Steve says, stepping closer to him.

“Not what I see in the mirror.”

“Then get a new one, cause it's broken,” Steve insists.

Bucky stares down at the yellow painting again. “Is that really what you see? You see someone smilin', someone living?”

Steve looks down at the painting, too. It's what he sees. There's the darkness, yes. There's the despair, yes. But among it all is the smile. Bucky shines like a million stars. It's cheesy, but it's true.

“That's why I painted it like that.”

Bucky scoffs. “To make yourself feel better.”

“It's all for you, Buck.” He meets his gaze evenly. Bucky is staring back at him, his round eyes just a little wide, just a little open and hopeful. Steve wants to pick up his sketchbook and draw. He wants to capture this expression forever and paint it yellow and green and blue and stare at it when it's cold and lonely at night. “They're all for you. Maybe you'll never see in the mirror what I see when I look at you, but maybe you'll at least take me at my word.”

“That you're delusional? Sure,” Bucky says, and the smile that follows is genuine. It wrinkles the skin around his eyes, and they shine. They shine for him, and Steve almost caves.

He looks down at the canvas. It is a little too yellow, he supposes. But Bucky picks it up again with his one hand, higher in the air, like he's inspecting it up in the sunlight. The sunset is filling the room with a warm glow, and god, if the painting doesn't look uglier and uglier by the second. Steve wants to snatch it out of Bucky's hand and even moves to grab it. But Bucky leans away and gently rests the canvas atop Steve's sketchbook.

“I want it.”

Steve waits a moment, then nods. “You can have them all. They're all for you.”

“No. Just this one.” Bucky turns to Steve. He's grinning. “I told you. Worth a million bucks.”

Steve laughs. “I doubt anyone would pay a hundred for my crappy art, much less a million.”

“I would,” Bucky says gently. And he really means it.

There's a long silence that follows. Bucky stares back at the painting. Steve watches him.

“Okay. I'll sell it to you.”

“For a million bucks?” Bucky asks with a chuckle. “I barely have a penny to my name.”

“No. I'll sell it for something worth more than that. A promise.”

Bucky looks up at him with curious eyes. Steve's heart is beating so fast in his chest that it just might burst out of him at any moment. The look on Bucky's face is almost worried.

Steve opens his mouth. Closes it again.

“I'll give it to you if you promise me, Buck, promise me you'll try.”

Bucky's shoulders fall and he deflates. A breath escapes him and the hurt look on his face stabs at Steve's heart.

“I am.”

“Promise me you won't stop. No matter what, you won't give up.”

Bucky's grip tightens on the canvas. His fingers are yellow. His face twists again. Then there's a fond look on his face. It's in moments like these that Steve thinks he's lying. Bucky remembers everything. He has to. There's no other explanation for that face. He looks at Steve as if he's expecting something else, as if Steve's the coward who's afraid to say the truth. It's smug, and it's so Bucky, and Steve almost caves again.

“Okay,” Bucky finally says. Then, his arm jerks a little, and the canvas is laid gently on the bed, and then he's taking a step forward and his paint-covered fingers are wrapping around Steve's neck. Bucky presses his cheek against Steve's, and Steve quickly catches up and returns the embrace.

“I promise.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> This fic was inspired by "Yellow" by Coldplay. 
> 
> Constructive criticism welcome, and of course, comments are super welcome!


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